AAI makes qualifying rules sharper

The second National Ranking Archery Tournament, currently underway at the Army Sports Institute in Pune, will see some new sets of rules being introduced for team selection ahead of the next World Cup Archery Tournament (Stage III), to be held at Antalya in Turkey from May 28.

After the completion the two FITA rounds in the first two days, 16 players from each category will make the grade to compete in the Olympic round the next day.

Generally the top eight archers qualify to represent the country. But this time around, they will be required to compete in two Olympic rounds on consecutive days to make the cut. Moreover, points of the individuals in this meet and the earlier senior nationals at Hyderabad will also come into play. The cumulative points of the two would be taken into consideration to make archers eligible for the third Olympic round, which will form basis for the actual selection.

But wasn’t that the case last time around too? “Yes it was, but what matters is the mental toughness of the archers on a windy day and the opposition,” added Tiwary.

Indian men finished 10th and the women came seventh in the first of the five Olympic qualifying rounds. Only Dola Banerjee reached the semi-final and finished 6th in the overall rankings, while Chekrovolu Swuro and Tarundeep Rai managed to reach the quarter finals and pre-quarters respectively. Swuro finished 9th overall while Rai was lowly placed at 21st.

In the team event, the women archers lost to Korea in the quarter finals while the men’s team went down to Mexico by one point in the first round.

But the players and coaches were unanimous in blaming the extreme weather condition for the debacle.

They claimed that after practicing in temperatures of 34 to 36 degrees in India, it was very difficult to acclimatise amid the freezing cold and strong winds in Ulsan.

The office bearers however refuse to buy this logic. “What they did at Ulsan was pathetic,” said Sanjeeb Singh, secretary of the AAI . “Blaming the weather condition for not performing and that too when you are competing at the highest level of the game is just not acceptable,” Singh added.

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